With its nationally televised final dash up Flagstaff Mountain, local race organizers trumpeted last summer's Boulder stage of the USA Pro Cycling Challenge as "the biggest day in American pro cycling history."

Yet Boulder cycling fans won't see a repeat in 2013.

Andrew Shoemaker, co-chairman of the city's local organizing committee, made it official late Friday afternoon, announcing that Boulder won't submit a bid for a USA Pro Cycling Challenge stage next year and instead will focus on landing a leg of the elite race in 2014.

Shoemaker already had warned the City Council this week that the race was unlikely to return to Boulder in 2013. On Friday, he said the committee decided not to pursue a stage in 2013 after talking to USA Pro Cycling Challenge CEO Shawn Hunter.

"As a result of the discussions, it was clear that we should focus on 2014," Shoemaker said. "That's based on discussions with the people that decide where the race goes."

Race organizers have not attributed the decision to the difficulties they experienced planning the Boulder stage, which took place Aug. 25 following months of wrangling over the environmental impact to Flagstaff Mountain and concerns that the steep finish would be scrapped entirely over wildfire fears.

Shoemaker noted the complexity of running a route through Boulder, saying, "It requires a level of planning that exceeds most of the other types of stages."

"There's a lot of logistics involved," Shoemaker said. "Nothing in Boulder is easy."

In an interview Friday, Hunter emphasized the difficulty of building the overall Pro Cycling Challenge race route, calling it a "complicated puzzle."

"By featuring different cities each year, we have the opportunity to share more of Colorado with the world through our television and online broadcasts," Hunter wrote in an e-mail. "The Flagstaff finish was epic -- one of the best days of racing I have ever seen in front of huge crowds. We look forward to bringing the race back to Boulder in the future."

Muted economic impact

City Councilman Ken Wilson said Friday that he agreed with the local organizing committee's decision, adding that taking a year off will give Boulder time to process the 2012 race stage.

"This came very quickly on the heels of our analysis," Wilson said of the deadline later this month to bid on stages of the 2013 race. "Did we do it right? Can we spend less money next time? It's going to take us a little while to digest all of that. It was a great way to buy us some more time and make this stage really special because maybe it doesn't happen as often."

This summer's Boulder stage brought in an estimated $1.2 million in visitor spending, according to a University of Colorado economic impact study, and $48,000 in sales tax revenue. City officials said in a memo to the council that taxpayers spent $283,000, mostly in the form of additional police, fire and open space staffing.

Yet the economic impact was much less than the $8 million that the Boulder Convention and Visitors Bureau had predicted -- though council members said the low numbers didn't mean they didn't want the race back. City Manager Jane Brautigam called it "an enormous success" during a City Council meeting on Thursday.

Those repeat stops led some local cyclists to question why race organizers wouldn't want to add Boulder to the list of staple cities.

"Boulder being so synonymous with cycling, it should be worked into one of the hallmark stages of this race," cyclist Craig Randall said, adding that Boulder should be the challenge's Alpe d'Huez, the recurring finish of the Tour de France.

Jennifer Fowler, a former Boulder resident and current Denver-based USA Cycling coach, said she didn't understand how waiting until 2014 to return the race to Boulder would build momentum.

"Everyone in the cycling industry and community worked hard to bring this race to fruition," said Fowler, who volunteered as a course marshal last August. "To stop now would only make it lose momentum. It might be hard to get the race back on track (in Boulder)."

But Boulder Mountainbike Alliance President Jason Vogel said he agreed with the idea of waiting until 2014 to try to host the race again.

He said the cycling community should be concerned with the race's sustainability and success as a whole, not just its benefit to Boulder.

"It doesn't need to be every year," he said. "It's probably a good thing it's not here every year. Then it gets stale."

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